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Wizard’s Rules

April 24, 2008

I would like to share THE rules which I try to live by—Wizard’s Rules. Though I’m not much into following rules, I guess it’s somehow necessary to have an “idea” of how one should go about her life. Unlike the Ten Commandments of the One above, which were made to be strictly followed, my ten rules are more like a guide to me. It’s ironic that I find it harder to follow the Rules than it is to abide by the Commandments. I guess it’s because the Wizard’s Rules are based more on logic and reason, while the Commandments are based more on faith and emotion (I’m trying to be as objective here as possible). Take note that, contrary to public opinion (hehe) on my belief, I am not a nonbeliever, though I’m not a practicing Catholic (I’m Catholic since birth). I just do not have much belief (hmmm… violation of a commandment?) in organized religion; there’s just too much (what’s the term?) politics.

I’m not trying to persuade people here or trying to say that the Rules are better than the Commandments, but I think the Rules fit just right in this chaotic world (and to me). So here are the rules (btw, these are taken from a great fantasy series):

Wizard’s First Rule:

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they’re afraid it might be true. Peoples’ heads are full of knowledge, facts and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

– Though I don’t think people are as stupid as this implies. Try to remove expectations, wishes, and fears, and maybe we will see the “truth.”

Wizard’s Second Rule:

The greatest harm can result from the best intentions.

– I’ve done this in oh so many times. It made you all the more guilty because you failed to see what was coming (when you should have).

Wizard’s Third Rule:

Passion rules reason.

– Amen.

Wizard’s Fourth Rule:

There was magic in sincere forgiveness. Magic to heal. In forgiveness you grant, and more so in the forgiveness you receive.

– Yes, there is. I guess you have to forgive without expecting apologies or explanations, but isn’t this so hard? Harder is forgiving the world (or you thought it is the world that needs forgiving) for all its violence and cruelty. In anger, there will never be peace of mind (but anger is sometimes what drives people).

Wizard’s Fifth Rule:

Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie.

– Actions speak louder than words. Try hard not to be naive and ignorant, and try not to lie (hehe). (hey, you reached halfway already, hope you keep reading!)

Wizard’s Sixth Rule:

The most important rule there is, the Wizard’s Sixth Rule: The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists, exists, what is, is and from this irreducible bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. It is the foundation from which life is embraced.

Thinking is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts nor are they a means to discover them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality; it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss that we refuse to see. Faith and feelings are the darkness to reason’s light. In rejecting reason, refusing to think, one embraces death.

– Need I say more?

Wizard’s Seventh Rule:

Life is the future, not the past. The past can teach us, through experience, how to accomplish things in the future, comfort us with cherished memories, and provide the foundation of what has already been accomplished. But only the future holds life. To live in the past is to embrace what is dead. To live life to its fullest, each day must be created anew. As rational, thinking beings, we must use our intellect, not a blind devotion to what has come before, to make rational choices.

– Carpe diem! Life is so short. Let us not dwell on the past or be overly stuck in a moment. Yes, life is hard, but move on. It’s hard to move on, but try, and try harder.

Wizard’s Eighth Rule:

Talga Vassternich. Deserve Victory.

– Be worthy of your dream, if not, dream will remain only a dream.

Wizard’s Ninth Rule:

A contradiction cannot exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole. To believe in a contradiction is to abdicate your belief in the existence of the world around you and the nature of the things in it, to instead embrace any random impulse that strikes your fancy—to imagine something is real simply because you wish it were. A thing is what it is, it is itself. There can be no contradictions.

Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breathe life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded, not of thinking, rational men.

In reality, contradictions cannot exist. To believe in them, you must abandon the most important thing you possess: your rational mind. The wager for such a bargain is your life. In such an exchange, you always lose what you have at stake.

– Never have blind faith. Though faith makes us human, and not thinking robots, let us not based our life just on faith. See things for what they are, and believe if there is reason to.

Wizard’s Tenth Rule:

Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one’s self.

– Face the truth. It will set you free.

There you go: Wizard’s Rules. Hope people find some sense to these guides. There is one thing though, it is really difficult to follow rules. :-)

Posted by mordsith at 12:21 pm | permalink

Previous Comments

there are people who like to follow rules (not me!). there are some who just simply live for themselves. then there are who want to be ruled by their emotions and things unseen, and of course, those who make logic and reasons their gods. I’d say, to each his own!
But there is one thing that doesn’t need reason to be able to exist with meaning. The love you feel for your parents or even for your unborn child… deep thinking and logic do not have to be part in these situations. The rule there is … you just love them. Definitely not hard to follow, aight? :)

Posted by ka2x at April 24, 2008, 5:33 pm

Mas madali nga sundin ang 10 Commandments! :)

You know, like ka2x, ako, I don’t go much by the so-called rules of life. I just live my life the way I know. Para kasing life becomes more complicated when you think of these “rules.” Like “The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason”…but what about your heart? What about what’s good for your heart and soul? Sometimes, the big decisions we make are made from the heart…diba?

Well, kanya kanya nga talaga yan…basta the important thing is, we live our lives to the fullest…and be happy!

Posted by kumareng grace at April 24, 2008, 5:43 pm

ka2x and kumarenggrace, as i said, i think of them as “guides.” in everything, there should be equilibrium, balance. i have these rules, i have the commandments.

carpe diem!

Posted by mordsith at April 24, 2008, 6:40 pm

in the magical world–
you may or may not follow them. FOLLOW them and you either enjoy the powers of the universe OR perish from the dark magic; DON’T FOLLOW them, and you’ll be among the people who are being used by those with magic… who didn’t even know the difference between duty and betrayal.

in the modern world [and yeah, sometimes magical, too!] –
these are realizations. just like cliches, these are tried and tested generalizations. fact of life. i think we should use these to guide us in making decisions. i envy those people who have mastered these rules.

the only sovereign that should rule you is reason..
magic in forgiveness..
greatest harm resulting from the best intentions..

how can you go wrong?

:-)

i love kahlan!

Posted by x at April 24, 2008, 8:55 pm

Is this a “Jerry Maguire” thing?
I TRY to follow some “rules.” TRY. As long as I act normal (yeah, I know, this is subject for debate) and don’t harm people with what I do, I think I’m pretty much doing great (thank you very much). Some “rules” though are f*cking hard to follow, or stupid, and make you go “WTF?!”
I think we should enjoy life, live it, and not be dictated by some norm we think is shit. And generally be nice to people.

Posted by the husband at April 25, 2008, 7:09 am

TheHusband, I think I’ve seen a lot of those WTF “rules.” I must’ve broken a whole lot of them, too. But I also TRY to live by what I believe is right, just, and fair. That’s why I love Desiderata.

I believe that, generally, there must be a standard of acceptable behavior. You can’t not follow rules just because you think it’s cool or you think they only only cover lesser-minded mortals (if one must really feel that way, that’s fine, as long as he/she doesn’t go around creating rules for others to follow). I’m all for free will - I think that’s the core of our humanity - but it must have conscience and responsibility.

As for much of the societal norms, I think they’re flexible. That’s fine by me.

Posted by zarine at April 25, 2008, 9:57 am

i am not about to make an institution out of these 10 wzard’s “rules” but i just want to try and put a perspective — maybe wrong, maybe right — out of this post.

the irony of this all is that there seems to be no “rule” at all being imposed upon us by these wizards. (i am about to start Soul of the Fire na! yey!) the only “rule” that falls under that classification — at least essentially — is the sixth and eight rules: “The only sovereign you can allow to rule you is reason” and “Deserve victory.” (in fact the sixth is even a statement of yet another fact, but well, yeah, it tells–commands us, if you will–to allow nothing but reason to rule us. a corollary-irony [huh?] is that if you allow your own reason to guide you, you are to disregard any other do-this-and-do-that statements at their face value.)

if you have a list of “you-shoulds” and you-should-nots,” well, that’s a set of rules — structurally and essentially — regardless of the commander/ruler.

i think we should distinguish a WTF rule (thehusband, pahiram ha? :-) ) from the law of nature… of life. if a company says you should wear a decent attire (and by that, they mean business casual/s) wiyth the intention of increasing your productivity, then, i guess that’s a WTF rule. they should see the ‘attire’ of people from microsoft and google. if the society, or a fraction of it, tells you you should only marry a person of the same religious denomination, again, i think that’s a WTF rule. (i know these examples are debatable as far sa WTF-ness [not to me though] is concerned, but not the fact that they are rules.)

a statement like “Mind what people do, not only what they say, for deeds will betray a lie,” for me, is a law of life. it is a law of nature, and not just an effin’ rule imposed by someone or anyone. between the 10 commandments and these wizard’s rules (ok, watch out, this may be a bit devil-ish for some), i think the latter respects freewill more. the latter gives you guidelines, then, lets you decide on your own. the former, on the other hand, tells you to do this, OR ELSE. don’t get me wrong. i do not question the prudence of the 10 commandments (except the 10th — joke!:-) ). it’s just that i’d rather be a “faithful follower” of guidelines than of imposed rules. freewill is what makes us human… what makes us different from other creatures. but yun nga — zarine, pahiram ng words mo — freewill has to have conscience and responsibility.

Posted by x at April 27, 2008, 7:38 am

eks, there’s a part in your above comment that concerns me a bit (and you know what that is), and I can agree with you on that not being particularly reasonable. To make it clear, though, in my case, it’s not a “hard rule” (i.e., can never be relaxed or violated). But I’m not about to make this about myself, he he.

Going back to what mordsith shared (I’m clueless about the book), personally I think the Wizard’s Rule is insightful. After all, it’s written by an person who or is living life and has seen what makes it work.

Posted by zarine at April 27, 2008, 12:43 pm

I think I just had a nosebleed!
Excuse me po! Pengeng tissue! Tissue!

Posted by The Husband at April 28, 2008, 8:23 am

nice one, thehusband :) tissue po din sa banda dito.
peace :)

Posted by ka2x at April 28, 2008, 2:11 pm

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